Halo halo

rondo’s getting traded to Public Enemy

… Nine hundred miles away and a month sooner, at his mansion in Isleworth, FL, Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal announces to the press his retirement from professional basketball. His beat-up knees make getting up and down the court at the necessary pace an impossibility. The last time I see him try to run in a game, he looks like a man using 80% of his strength to keep from crapping his pants. He’s 39. It’s worse (more alien) than Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair. After the press conference he goes upstairs into the master bathroom, unfurls his penis, and urinates into a Japanese electronic toilet. The disturbance of the water’s surface triggers the toilet to play Beyoncé’s “I Care”. Shaq tweets with one hand, aims his mighty stream with the other.

“I’m old only compared to Young Shaq,” he thinks. “College Shaq. Bringing Down the Backboard Shaq. Compared to Old Shaq — Grandchildren Playing Soccer Shaq, Fat as Fat Marlon Brando Shaq, Hard of Hearing Shaq, Dead Shaq — compared to them, I am Young Shaq.” He shakes the last drips of piss off and visualizes a future in which a thousand cloned versions of him dominate a growth sector of a world economy that is dependent upon genial humour combined with astonishing acts of strength and grace.

AP Photo/Charles Krupa

I thought Perk deserved better than getting blindsided in Denver, then having to limp around with a sprained knee and pack his stuff with tears rolling down his face. Maybe I’m a sap. But that was our guy. Family. On the phone, my dad decided — completely seriously — that he would rather have lost the 2011 title with Perkins than have tried to win it without him. Why?

“Because he was truly part of our team,” Dad said. “I don’t want to root for laundry. I watched that guy for eight years. That should mean something. Continuity should mean something.”

Within a few weeks, both of us will have talked ourselves into the Jeff Green era. That’s what fans do. We take the hits, shake them off, keep coming back. The Celtics will morph into something slightly different: a little more athletic, a little more flexible, a little younger and, hopefully, almost as tough. Perkins will fly to Oklahoma City, live out of a hotel room, make new friends and try to help Durant and Russell Westbrook make the Finals. Maybe the Celtics will see him there. It won’t feel weird at all, because that’s the way professional sports work. We are rooting for laundry. Whether we want to admit it or not.

      — Bill Simmons 

I will give $100 to th first person who can correctly explain to me why looking @ this picture and reading this passage makes me unbearably sad, even though I lost nothing, nobody lost anything, it’s just a millionaire moving from one town to another town, think about what’s happening in Africa, think about th unemployment rate, think about war, think about yr parents getting old, these things are important, meanwhile hasn’t life been good to you, don’t you love yr friends and yr family, haven’t you never been hungry, isn’t this a cold cruel Earth in which Kendrick Perkins’ humble contributions to th team are soon forgotten and won’t you die alone, unloved and unmourned …?

“We actually give two cents about each other, which is a rarity.  We actually deal with each other off the court, which is a big plus.  And I’m not just saying that just to make y’all columns look like whatever it is.  This is true life.  And we enjoy each other.  We’re like brothers.  We bitch, we complain, we argue, we debate, we laugh.  Know what I mean?  We’re like brothers.  Real life.”

2010.11.16

happy Thanksgiving, from Turkey

“This is some Istanbul shit”